Suicide Squad Vol. 4: Earthlings On Fire by Rob Williams, Tony S. Daniel, Sandu Florea, Neil Edwards, Stjepan Sejic and Tomen Morey (graphic novel review).
Amanda Waller certainly knows how to play with the devil. While she’s keeping Lex Luthor busy by having a drink with him in his penthouse, her Suicide Squad are in his vault looking for a particular item and getting in the way of its guards. Oddly, had she asked or rather accepted the small wrapped gift he had offered her, she would have gotten it with a lot less fuss. Namely, some fragments of green kryptonite to make a brain bomb for Zod.
Now she has a Kryptonian powerhouse on the team for all of one mission, to go back to Russia when he was previously imprisoned, before he reflects his heat vision off a mirror and burns a hole through his skull to get it out.
Oddly, Zod doesn’t so much want revenge on the Squad but to release Phantom Zone access bubble and get the prisoners out that Waller had previously stolen and there is a sacrifice of Rick Flag to stop that happening.
I’m a little less sure about Flagg having a relationship with Harley Quinn prior to all of this. I mean, she is a bit of a psycho, although this is ultimately a set-up for her coming the next team leader in volume 5. In some respects, you would have thought Waller would have had other possible leaders outside of the existing team in case of emergencies.
Apart from the build-up with Luthor, this is action all the way. The one advantage of using prisoners as a super-team is they don’t really have much of a life outside of the Squad, although we do see Killer-Croc and June Moone rather than her Enchantress alter-ego looking to sell her artwork was a surprise.
The continual changes in the team hasn’t changed the core group and only three volumes to go before the Rebirth gets aborted.
GF Willmetts
March 2021
(pub: DC Comics, 2017. 128 page graphic novel. Price: I pulled my copy for about £ 6.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-40127-539-6)
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